Show of the week
To launch a science-fiction anthology series is to dare comparisons with The Twilight Zone. Happily, Welcome to Paradox is not unworthy to be mentioned in the same sentence as Rod Serling's classic show. The weekly dramas, all based on short stories, are set in Betaville, a future city filled with ultrahigh technology and perennial human unhappiness. The series got off to an uncertain start Aug. 17 with the murky tale of a psychic cop (Steven Bauer) investigating a possibly murderous hologram of the Virgin Mary. But the Aug. 31 entry is a solid prison drama that casts Ice-T as a latter-day Cool Hand Luke defying a system in which the "biochip" implant has replaced the ball and chain. The show improves further with the clever Sept. 7 episode, starring A Martinez as an old-fashioned private eye whose milieu of bars, babes and bullets may be only virtually real. The most potent Paradox hour we have seen is a still-unscheduled drama called "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," with The Nanny's Nicholle Tom as a manufactured celebrity remote-controlled by marketing wizards. But who needs Michael Philip (The Bold and the Beautiful) as the magisterial host? Sorry to say, he's no Rod Serling.
Bottom Line: Makes the future look intriguing
FOX (Sundays, 7:30 p.m. ET)
Call it Baby Boom II. Call it Two Guys, a Girl and a Baby. By any name, this banal new sitcom is nothing you haven't seen before. Jon Patrick Walker (Loving) plays an ambitious young executive whose wife skips off and leaves him with their infant son. He can't trust the kid with his live-in playboy brother (Eddie McClintock). He can't expect his demanding boss (Ron Leibman) to cut him some slack. So Walker will have to depend on the new nanny (Jennifer Westfeldt, formerly of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place), a graduate student with a tendency to lecture. The Aug. 23 pilot, like the contents of a baby's bottle, is strictly formula.
Bottom Line: May not survive infancy
Showtime (Sun., Aug. 30, 9 p.m. ET)
"In Wyoming, when we can't sleep, we watch television," says Maurey, Rosanna Arquette's character in Floating Away. This dull TV movie is capable of inducing drowsiness in all 50 states. Maurey is a bitter problem drinker, reeling from her father's death and her husband's unfaithfulness, who goes on a west-to-east road trip with two recovering alcoholics: Lloyd (Judge Reinhold), a good-hearted lug pining for his estranged wife; and wheelchair-bound Shane (Paul Hogan, of fleeting Crocodile Dundee fame), who is terminally ill and tirelessly talkative. The film tries a little of everything—comedy, pathos, even violence—but always seems to be stumbling around in a semi-stupor.
Bottom Line: Despite the title, it slowly sinks
Cousin Skeeter
Nickelodeon (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8-9 p.m. ET)
Hey, we can understand how a 12-year-old girl can talk with the animals. If Dr. Dolittle can do it, why not? But we don't quite get how a 13-year-old boy can fail to notice that his cousin is a puppet.
These are the thoughts that come to mind after watching the premieres of two prime-time kids' series airing twice weekly on Nickelodeon starting Sept. 1. The Wild Thornberrys (8 p.m.), a skewed, funny, animated show from the creators of Rugrats, concerns a family that travels the world to film nature documentaries. The father (voice by Tim Curry) sounds like a dashing Douglas Fairbanks type but seems as clueless about family dynamics as any domesticated sitcom dad. The 16-year-old daughter (Danielle Harris) is bored by adventure—and everything else. But her plucky 12-year-old sister (Lacey Chabert of Party of Five), whose best friend is a finicky monkey (Tom Kane), keeps things lively with her ability to converse with all manner of beasts. In the pilot she goes hunting with a hungry lioness, voiced by the ever-sultry Eartha Kitt.
Cousin Skeeter (8:30) is a live-action sitcom centering on a shy 13-year-old (Robert Ri'chard) who is constantly being dragged into mischief by his jive-talking cousin, an unusually fuzzy, unusually limber, unusually short young man—i.e., a puppet, voiced by MTV's Bill Bellamy. On paper this probably looked great; onscreen it's an awkward, if amiable, hybrid. We suggest a casting call for a flesh-and-blood Skeeter.
Bottom Line: A new kids' show that's wild and another that's weird
>Sunday, Aug. 30 TWELFTH NIGHT PBS (8 p.m. ET) Helen Hunt brushes up her Shakespeare for this live production from New York City's Lincoln Center.
Monday, Aug. 31 MACAULAY CULKIN: THE E! TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY E! (8 p.m. ET) You may wish he had stayed home alone, but here's a profile of the recently wed actor.
Tuesday, Sept. 1 MAD ABOUT YOU NBC (8 p.m. ET)
A truly amazing rerun: Paul's life flashes before his eyes—without commercial interruptions.
Wednesday, Sept. 2 BIOGRAPHY: STEVE RUBELL A&E (8 p.m. ET) Lord of the Disco charts the ups and downs of the late Studio 54 co-owner.
Thursday, Sept. 3 ER NBC (10 p.m. ET) Michael Rapaport plays a burn victim in a repeat directed by series star Anthony Edwards.
Friday, Sept. 4 DAZED AND CONFUSED USA (11 p.m. ET) Before he was big, Ben Affleck was a Texas teen in this 1993 flick.
Saturday, Sept. 5 THE EDGE HBO (9 p.m. ET) Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin are bear bait in the 1997 thriller.
>Steve Lyons
During his nine unremarkable years in the major leagues, Steve Lyons was always known more for mugging than for slugging. First with the Red Sox and later the White Sox, he frequently slid into first base, played tic-tac-toe in the dirt with opposing players and once even dropped his pants on the field. "I was accused of not being serious enough," says Lyons, 38, "but the game is sup- "posed to be fun."
Now Lyons, who earned the moniker Psycho for his aggressive play (not his zany antics), has brought his wild ways to the broadcast booth. As one of FOX's chief baseball commentators, he is an in-studio analyst for the Saturday Baseball Game of the Week and also calls games on FX.
After stumbling onto broadcasting by doing his own play-by-play in the dugout to pass the time as a benchwarmer, Lyons retired from baseball in 1993 and spent two years at a Chicago sports radio station before FOX recruited him in 1996. "Let's face it," he says, "FOX didn't hire me to be Tom Brokaw."
But Lyons, who lives near L.A. with his wife, Christa, 33, and two children (a third is due at any moment), is more than just flash and brash. "He's very funny and glib, but he really knows the game," says FOX announcer Chip Caray (grandson of the late Harry Caray). Demurs Lyons: "The toughest thing for me is just to remember that I can't swear."
- Contributors:
- Craig Tomashoff.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
